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Christmas Releases: The Favourite, Vice


Christmastime Releases
These opened across Canada on Christmas Day.

The Favourite (Ireland/UK/U.S. http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thefavourite/)
 Several of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s previous films have left me cold, indeed repelled (Dogtooth, The Killing of a Sacred Deer).  But in this case, an uproarious ribald costume drama set during the early 1700s reign of Britain’s Queen Anne, his twisted sense of black humour results in sheer delight.  The dotty, gout-afflicted Anne (Olivia Colman) is being controlled by a viperish right-hand woman Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) determined to raise land taxes to prosecute a war with the French.  That is until a servant woman Abigail (Emma Stone) comes on the scene, relieves Anne’s condition and schemes her way into Anne’s favours, affections, and bed.  Abigail gets her way in cahoots with the leader of a flamboyantly bewigged and attired parliamentary faction of landowning gentleman. From a vicious rivalry for Anne’s attentions, only one “lady” can emerge on top as the “favourite”.
            Anne as addled monarch is a rather pathetic figure, yet also oddly sympathetic.  Claiming to have lost 17 children she surrounds herself with 17 rabbits. Colman is superb in the role, as are Weisz and Stone as the jealous contenders to be the power behind the throne.  It’s a sumptuously entertaining affair and one of the year’s best movies.  A

I loved writer-director Adam McKay’s previous film, 2015’s The Big Short which satirized the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and had high hopes for this take down of former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney.  However McKay’s tongue-in-cheek approach to Cheney’s remarkable rise misfires as much as hits the target, notwithstanding Christian Bale’s equally remarkable portrayal of the man.  (Bale has become famous for such shape-shifting physical transformations.)
            We first see Cheney as the underachieving young man, a n’er-do-well dropout from Yale, who gets an ultimatum to shape up or ship out from wife Lynne (Amy Adams). Cheney’s break is to become a Congressional intern to future defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), from there catapulting to become President Ford’s chief of staff following Nixon’s downfall.  Cheney will prosper again during the Reagan years, then even more so when he becomes chief executive of the Haliburton corporate empire.  McKay even inserts an early fake ending to the Cheney success story.  That’s before 2000 when Cheney is wooed by Bush family “black sheep” George W. (Sam Rockwell) and only agrees to become his running mate on the “unified executive theory” understanding that he will operate in effect as an all-powerful and unaccountable co-president.  The terrorist tragedy of 9/11 further empowers Cheney’s ambitious self-serving designs (highlights including the invasion of Iraq, “enhanced interrogation” torture of suspects, and omnipresent surveillance by the national security state).  Along the way McKay has fun with Cheney’s multiple heart attacks as well as recounting the bizarre incident when he accidentally shot a hunting companion.
            McKay never uses the critical phrases most associated with Cheney—as being the “prince of darkness” who mused about the need to “work the dark side”. But it’s clear he sees Cheney as a ruthless operator who has exerted a nefarious influence on American democracy and ethical norms; the one exception being his acceptance of a lesbian daughter and concern to protect her. For most of the story McKay uses an unidentified narrator (Jesse Plemons) who ends up being a heart donor.  Then at the end he has an unrepentant Cheney address the camera, and during the closing credits inserts a mock riff on the film’s evident “liberal bias”.  The problem is that too much of this plays as parody rather than incisive exploration of vice-presidential vices.  Adams is excellent as Cheney’s equally ambitious wife Lynne.  But Carell as a cynical Rumsfeld and Rockwell as a pliable George W. turn in amusing caricatures rather than insightful character studies. Somehow Cheney outsmarts everyone else and the joke is on the American people.
            Vice has received an enthusiastic rave from veteran critic Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter but most reviews have been much less kind (a middling 65% rating on rottentomatoes.com). Bale deserves an Oscar acting nomination.  The movie unfortunately does not.  B-
    


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